- Title: College towns in US brace for impact with football season up in the air
- Date: 29th May 2020
- Summary: STATE COLLEGE, PENNSLYVANIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHAMPS SPORTS GRILL OWNER, DANTE LUCCHESI, SAYING: "We're we're planning right now and figuring out different scenarios and how we would alter our business. You know, our venue downtown, occupancy, 850 people. So, you know, if we don't have those bodies to come in or if we're restricted, th
- Embargoed: 12th June 2020 03:48
- Keywords: Nittany Lions Penn State University Sanford Stadium UGA University of Georgia Bulldogs football games
- Location: STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA; ATHENS, GEORGIA; AND TAMPA, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES / INTERNET
- City: STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA; ATHENS, GEORGIA; AND TAMPA, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES / INTERNET
- Country: USA
- Topics: American Football,Sport
- Reuters ID: LVA005CFZG4ZR
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: MUSIC NOT CLEARED FOR USE
In 2019, Dante Lucchesi and his Champs Sports Grill in State College, Pennsylvania, were on a roll.
The 400-seat restaurant his father opened in 1986 was full every weekend when Penn State University's powerhouse football team took the field.
The downtown location he added in 2017, with roughly twice the capacity and just over a block from campus, was the runner-up in Barstool Sports' Best College Bar contest and host to a surprise Jonas Brothers concert featured on the Today Show.
But now, like thousands of local business owners in university towns across the country, Lucchesi faces the unthinkable: A year of college football wiped off the calendar because of a pandemic that has torpedoed the economy and may rewrite the rules for mass public gatherings.
On seven or eight weekends each fall, thousands of fans and alumni pour into State College, a town of fewer than 45,000, to watch the Nittany Lions football team. In a region that saw no economic growth in 2018, the last year for which local-level data is available, football weekends are vital.
"So much of our business hinges on these home football games," said Lucchesi, describing the Thursday-Sunday bump his bar gets during the season.
"This has just been a big curveball for us."
Seven hundred miles south in Athens, Georgia, businesses are awaiting word on season plans for the Sugar Bowl-winning University of Georgia and what it might mean for the hospitality industry.
David Bradley, head of the local chamber of commerce, estimated 220,000 out-of-towners descended on Athens - nearly twice the city's population - for the Bull Dogs' nail-biting win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish last September. And he said home games could have a $3 to $4 million economic impact on the community.
"The impact of college football on our community is astounding," he said.
"Just imagine what that does for the local economy, what that does to keep cash registers ringing."
Like major professional leagues, college programs are weighing options for salvaging a season, which typically kicks off in earnest in September. Possibilities include requiring fans to space out in stadiums, holding games without spectators, even postponing the season until the spring.
In many cases, the football season decision hinges on whether campuses reopen to students. The University of Michigan, a Penn State rival in the Big 10 Conference, will not field a team if students did not return to campus in the fall, its president told the Wall Street Journal.
There is uncertainty about when college football will be back.
The NCAA has said student-athletes can resume voluntary activities on campus as early as June 1, if schools and local laws do not prohibit them. And this week, college football officials and TV networks extended a June 1 target for determining the season's early game times.
Asked about the upcoming season, Penn State Athletics said it would continue "planning for various scenarios." Georgia's athletics director declined to comment on contingency plans for the season.
For the big programs, football generates the lion's share of athletic revenues, and any disruption will feed through university budgets and local economies where the schools are major employers.
More than $100 million of the Penn State athletics department's $164.5 million operating revenue came from football during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, according to its annual NCAA financial report. Nearly $37 million came from ticket sales for games at the 106,000-seat Beaver Stadium.
In Georgia it is even bigger, with the gridiron program accounting for $123 million out of total sports revenue of $174 million. Home game ticket sales totaled $34.6 million.
Even pushing the football season to the spring comes with challenges: After losing the end of the lucrative basketball season in March, many colleges and universities will be reluctant to trample on the basketball schedule this season.
Lucchesi said he hopes students' safety tops whatever plans are implemented, but he looks forward to a time when crowds can return.
"The area we're in right now, it's called Happy Valley. And we got that name here because during the Depression this area really wasn't affected because our local economy is 100% tied to the university," he said.
"I don't want to say we're recession-proof, but we're certainly resistant to that - as long as the university is in session."
(Production: Catherine Koppel, Amy Tennery) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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